The Maid Freed From The Gallows Pole is another one of those relentlessly morbid tales in folklore. The legend of the accursed maid has translated into some of the most harrowing cases any musician has pleaded for on behalf of a lady in distress. The story has been sung with different twists and turns, and often with a catatonic, fucked-up precision, sort of like the many versions of In The Pines or House Of The Rising Sun. Wikipedia tells us that it is about “a condemned maiden pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the executioner” and the smug bastard is right for a change. The more famous interpretations are by Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary. But they aren’t that great (no offence to Robert Plant or that Mr. Middle-aged, Long-haired, Vagrantly Gay, Seventies Rocker Dude in Peecos).

Lead Belly’s Gallis Pole is an obvious choice since his awesomeness knew no bounds back then, but certainly knew how to scrape every dried, crusty patch of blood from blackened hearts. Then there was American folk composer and an enthused nut for Appalachian music, John Jacob Niles, who recorded Hangman, a fantastically potent interpretation for Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely. He sounds like the Blair Witch on a severe guilt trip, mopping the floor with her tears and blood trickling from the cellar, and it sounds mesmerizing. Der Galgen is an interesting twist of the original by German Folk Metal outfit In Extremo; sounds catchy as hell with something in there for industrial metal aficionados.

The year 1963 saw a young Judy Collins performing Anathea, a mesmerizing Grecian version of the song, at the Newport Folk Festival; check out Judy putting June Carter and the entire cast of Glee to shame with her delicate harmonies. A bunch of YouTubbers have done the legend of the cursed maid proud too; especially 11-year-old Sorcha rocking the violin like a sullen feign and her grandpa who’s obviously a bit self-captivated. Good stuff though.

Through the decades, the song sometimes metamorphosed into a variant called Prickly Bush, but it wasn’t very haunting at all and therefore ripped the tune of its soulfulness.

Brrrr…

Damn I didn’t realize the weather was different up here.

Anyway, move along horsey, nothing to see here but a fairly decent cover by Nic Jones.

I think Nirvana was one of the most overrated bands ever. While I can’t deny the catchy harmonies that drove their songs into the minds of a million flannel-clad minions, I can safely say that they weren’t even close to being one of best bands of the Nineties. Hell, they weren’t even the forefathers of Grunge. Redd Kross, along with Neil Young’s Crazy Horse band were the overlords of the Seattle Sound with Mudhoney and Green River as its rightful knights in rusty armour. But like I said, they did conceptualize good rhythms for their music. And there’s no stronger evidence of this than their widely-salivated 1993 album “Unplugged In New York”. The real gem of that album, I felt, was “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” – at first glance, a seemingly distraught lover’s lament. Cobain’s patented sandpaper vocals screech out the first few lines with repressed angst, “My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me, tell me where did you sleep last night?” and then he goes on, as the lyrics slowly paint a picture of one of those creepy Southern backwoods’ stories.

Until a decade ago, I didn’t know that this was a cover song. Apparently, this song has its roots dating back to as early as 1870s. Originally titled as “In The Pines”, this haunting folk piece is “believed to be Southern Appalachian in origin” and its author nothing but a daunting mystery. In 1917, folk revivalist Cecil James Sharp was credited with the first printed version of the song; by then, it was titled “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”. Early 1920s witnessed a curious music enthusiast recording a version of this song onto a phonograph cylinder and interestingly enough, the lyrics were twisted and turned a bit to include a stanza about a decapitation and a reference about “the longest train”.

In fact, American folklore author Judith McCulloh (in a dissertation she wrote in 1970) claimed that there were nearly 160 permutations of the song. The common thread that runs through most of its incarnations was that lyrics always spoke of a woman being confronted. In some cases, we get the impression that the woman was “caught doing something wrong” and in others, it seems that she is being unfairly looked at as being guilty. Ora Ellison’s version of the song during the dawn of the twentieth century is probably the darkest, as it tells a tale of an African-American girl from Georgia getting raped by a male soldier, who later is decapitated.

Popularly known as Leadbelly, folk and blues guru William Ledbetter recorded many brilliant variants of this song between 1944 and 1948, which by then was titled “Black Girl (In The Pines)”. It sounds like one of those traditional blues tracks played during the Depression era…sort of like Ralph Stanley at a bluegrass concert. British singer/actress Marianne Faithful’s 1965 version was just as eerie with a dose of sweetness thrown in for good measure.

My favourite version of this legendary folk number is the one sung by Screaming Trees’ vocalist Mark Lanegan. His whiskey-soaked, nicotine-drenched vocals do justice to the song’s gritty roots. And oh, Cobain makes a smart move by restricting his vocals to the chorus section. Probably the best cover of a traditional song ever….yeah, even better than Pink Floyd psychedelic, spaced-out jamming on “House Of The Rising Sun”.